Self-sustained Replication of an RNA Enzyme

1) Information - the RNA is merely undergoing chemical reactions, it is not following "instructions" (e.g. DNA) to regenerate.

2) Translation - there is no mechanism for "interpreting" the information (non-existent) of the RNA and utilizing to build a product (e.g. Protein)

He is obviously not going to have one. The question is do we?

No - because you started with something that is unarguably "Life", and ended with more. In the RNA experiment, you started with RNA, which is unarguably "Not Life", and ended up with more "Not Life". QED - Experiments that start with non-life and end up with more non-life = irrelevant to abiogenesis.

One of the posters above states that the RNA has information. My own opinion on the subject (speaking only for myself) is that "material information" is qualitatively different than "non-material" information. RNA has what I call material information - information that is a direct result of its physical/chemical properties. This is the kind of information that even a water molecule has. A Living Cell, on the other hand, has nonmaterial information contained in its DNA - e.g. how to build a protein. The ability to build a copy of itself is not a characteristic of its physical binding chemistry, it is a process that requires messengers and translators. Replicating RNA replicates because of its chemical characteristics, not because of the information it contains that can be interpreted.